Great. thanks for detailed explanation. But that doesn't happen on z/VM or VM/ESA, and why do you see 4 more bytes after 0xff, but before form feed? It is not that you just see 0xff and form feed, but two empty lines and then form feed. So, if you were to follow the instructions in the output file, you would have one empty page with that strange character printed out, followed by the rest of the output. Fish, how is your HercPrt handling this?
Next question would be how to add end banner in DMKBOX, or in the spooler?